About the author of all this drivel

I'm a Utah native living in Portland, Oregon. I have a fascination for construction cranes, advice columns, and bicycle spandex. I recently graduated law school, and look forward to navigating the waters of the legal profession.

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Bunsnip is a word I coined when I couldn't remember the actual name for that delightful and hypnotic plaid-esque pattern also known as houndstooth.

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Saturday, March 10, 2007

There's an hour and 30 minute movie on Google video called Loose Change which I have just watched and which has left me deeply disturbed.

It's a video about 9/11, and let me just say that I don't like watching things about 9/11. I didn't see the recent movies about the towers or United 93 because I felt these movies were untimely and tacky. 9/11 is still such a fresh wound in our American history, and I feel that it's somehow exploitative to try to profit off of the lives of the innocent people who died that day.

To this day I can't see footage of the towers falling without still being emotionally affected, and without the memories of where I was and what I did the day it happened returning to me. It's one of those things that was so vivid for everyone in our generation. Like people who were around when Kennedy was shot, we all remember what we were doing when we heard that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.

So, this is why I don't like looking at things about 9/11. I am trying to forget that such atrocities can happen, because I enjoy the feeling of safety that comes with naivety.

But Ian was playing Loose Change on his computer, and after overhearing the first 5 or ten minutes, I joined him.

This is a conspiracy movie. It's a movie that posits that our own government was responsible for the events of 9/11. It posits that certain purported events of 9/11 didn't actually happen, like the crashes of United 93 and the plane that hit the pentagon.

I've heard a little bit about these conspiracy theories, and I've never paid them much attention. I remember there was a professor at BYU who in recent years owned up to subscribing to such a theory, and I think he may have been canned from his job for having this position. Nothing really surprising there to me. I don't put it past BYU to can people for having opinions that they as an institution don't support. And I don't really care if they do do that, slimy as it may be. So I never thought much of it, and I also just thought this guy was probably a nut.

Mostly, I think I just don't want to believe that our own government, as corrupt as I think politicians and other government officials generally are, would do something like that to its own people. I want to believe that deep down, despite the greed and corruption, that our leaders are basically good people. I want to believe that.

But after seeing that video, I think I can't really stand by my desire for ignorant bliss anymore. It is ignorant to forget, if it means ignoring that the official story doesn't quite add up. If anything, I think the government's story might be the real conspiracy theory. I feel like we have been betrayed by our own. And I think we are owed some real explanations, but I'm not holding my breath for ever getting them.

Still, this video is the most compelling explanation I have seen as to what happened. If you find a free hour and a half, check out Loose Changefor yourselves and see what you think.